Munkácsy exhibition in Hajdúszoboszló

2 Szilfákalja Street, Hajdúszoboszló, H-420021. March 2025.- 28. September

On the occasion of the 180th anniversary of the birth and 125th anniversary of the death of the world-famous Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy, and of course the 100th anniversary of the curative water of Hajdúszoboszló, a Munkácsy exhibition will open in Hajdúszoboszló from 21 March 2025.

Thanks to the fantastic exhibition, you will be able to admire almost 80 works by the world-famous painter in the city’s cultural center for more than half a year until September 28, 2025. The works of the exhibition were brought to our spa town thanks to the private collector Imre Pákh with the help of the Munkácsy Foundation and the Máté Kovács Municipal Cultural Centre and Library

Munkácsy exhibition in Hajdúszoboszló

Location, contact

  • Place of the exhibition: Kovács Máté Városi Művelődési Központ és Könyvtár
  • Exhibition period: 21. March 2025 – 28. September
  • Address: 2 Szilfákalja Street, Hajdúszoboszló, H-4200
  • Phone number: +36 52/558-800
  • Contact form

Ticked prices

Important!To purchase a local discounted ticket, you need to present your address card!

Ticket type Ticket price
Adult ticket 3.950 HUF/person
Child ticket (under 6 years) free
Child ticket (6-18 years old) 2.500 HUF
Pensioner and pedagogue ticket 2.500 HUF
Family ticket (2 adult + 2 Child) 10.000 HUF/family
↳ 3. and more children +1.500 HUF/person
Group discount for adults (10 person+) 3.000 HUF/person
Group discount for children (10 person+) 2.000 HUF/person
For local adult inhabitant* 2.500 HUF/person
Local child/pensioner inhabitant* 1.500 HUF/person

* Local inhabitants are entitled to the discount by presenting their address card.
* Pensioners and pedagogues are entitled to the discount by presenting their id card.

Opening hours

Important!Ticket office closes and last entry 45 minutes before the closing of the exhibition!

Period Open Closed
March 21, 2025 16:00 – 20:00
March 22, 2025 09:00 – 12:00
1 April – 30 June 2025 Monday – Friday: 10:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 09:00 – 12:00
Sunday
1 July – 31 August 2025 Tuesday – Sunday: 10:00 – 20:00 Monday
September 1–28, 2025 Monday – Friday: 10:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 09:00 – 17:00
Sunday
Easter holiday weekend
2025. April 18. – 21.
Friday- Sunday: 10:00 – 18:00 Monday
May 1. holiday weekend
2025. May 1. – 4.
Thursday – Sunday: 10:00 – 18:00

Visitor information

We ask you to follow our advice and rules below during your visit to the exhibition!

  • Appropriate clothing is required – For reasons of the protection of artworks, it is necessary to ensure 20-22 degrees Celsius and 48-52% humidity in the rooms, so please ensure appropriate clothing.
  • It is forbidden to bring bottles, food, drinks, live animals, children’s toys, stabbing and cutting utensils, or anything that endangers the physical integrity and safety of visitors and employees, or the condition of the works of art.
  • Cloakroom – The cloakroom is free and mandatory! Please leave your luggage, backpacks, umbrellas and bags of any size in the luggage storage. Please also drop off your coat in the cloakroom.
  • Photography and video recording – Photography is only possible without the use of a flash.
  • Visiting with a small child – Infants under the age of two may only be brought into the exhibition space in a carrier attached to the front of the body. Carrying any minor child on the neck or back is not permitted for safety reasons. Please pay special attention to the observance of the rules of art protection for children!
  • Mobile phones – Please turn down the volume on mobile phones!
  • Smoking-Smoking isprohibitedin the entire building
  • Accessibility- Those in need can use the elevator on the ground floor, while those with reduced mobility can use the toilet on the ground floor and on the first floor.
  • Number of visitors – 40 people can be in the exhibition halls at the same time, visitors arriving in excess of this number must wait.
  • Payment methods accepted at our cashier: Bank cards: Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, American Express, SZÉP Card – OTP (Please note that from 1 January 2023, the service pockets of SZÉP Cards have been discontinued, and the full amount on the card can be used without restriction at the points of acceptance.)

The Munkácsy exhibition and the Centenary event

Hint!The opening of the exhibition will be held on 21 March 2025 in the city’s Cultural Centre.

In 2025, which is a Centenary year in the life of Hajdúszoboszló, the well-known resort will not only commemorate the work of Ferenc Pávai Vajna, but the name of another renowned Hungarian artist will also be intertwined with that of the city of Hajdúszoboszló. 2025 will mark the 180th anniversary of the birth and 125th anniversary of the death ofMihály Munkácsy, celebrating which his works will be exhibited in the spa town of the Great Plain from 21 March 2025. The exhibition will feature nearly 80 original works by Munkácsy, including the well-known “Yawning Apprentice“, as well as portraits, landscapes, salon paintings from the Hungarian artist’s various periods, and last but not least, archive photos, documents and cult objects related to the painter’s life.

The first room of the exhibition features Munkácsy‘s paintings created before 1880 in Hungary or related to Hungarian themes, such as early portraits, Easter Sprinkling, Vineyard Hay Cart, Yawning Apprentice or Studies for Night Tramps and Pawnshop. The works belonging to the Christ-compositions are housed in the upstairs space: Compositional Study for Christ Before Pilate, Bust of Christ, Howling Boy, the excellent salon paintings: Contemplative Woman with a Dog, The Little Sugar Thief, In the Park, Promenade in Parc Monceau, portraits and model studies: Portrait of Madame Chaplin, Portrait of a Man, Parisian Woman. Munkácsy’ s late symbolist landscapes can also be seen here: Washerwomen I. – II, Shepherdess at the Edge of the Forest, Colpachi Landscape with Cows, and costume scenes painted at the end of the eighties: Ballad, Love Song, Embroidery Woman.
In addition to Munkácsy’s self-caricature, the exhibition ends with works depicting him, including a suggestive watercolor by the student József Rippl-Rónai and János Pásztor’s sculpture design for Munkácsy’s tombstone.

Pictures from the exhibition of the Munkácsy Exhibition in Hajdúszoboszló

Some pictures of the paintings that can be seen live at the exhibition (Source: Munkácsy Foundation)

Hajdúszoboszló - Munkácsy Exhibition - From the private collection of Imre Pákh

Private collection of Imre Pákh in Hajdúszoboszló

Pákh Imre, a Hungarian art collector living in the United States, brought Mihály Munkácsy’s paintings back to Hungary more than 20 years ago with the aim of introducing the works of the painter’s genius to the Hungarian people.

In recent decades, the continuously expanding, high-value collection a Hungarian art collector living in the United States, brought Mihály Munkácsy’s paintings back to Hungary more than 20 years ago with the aim of introducing the works of the painter’s genius to the Hungarian people. Has been visited by 5 million people under the management of the Munkácsy Foundation.

The last exhibition held at the Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged had more than 60 thousand art patrons. Thanks to this enormous series of successes, worthy of its fame, the cult of Munkácsy is still unbroken.

Imre Pákh’s Munkácsy collection is the largest privately-owned collection, and the second largest in the world after the Munkácsy collection kept in the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery.

Like Munkácsy, Imre Pákh was also born in Munkács. He brought with him respect and admiration for the painter from his parents’ house. During a conversation, he said that there was no specific antecedent of art collecting in the family:

„However, there were always pictures on the walls, and our apartment was full of books… In addition, we have always had several cultures and traditions, my ancestors come from several nationalities, although through my father, our family’s identity has always been Hungarian.”

Imre Pákh, who is a Hungarian-American dual citizen, follows this family tradition. With the help of museum professionals, he developed his collection of nearly a hundred works by Munkácsy over three decades. The core material consisting of paintings and graphics is complemented by documents, photographs, literature publications, as well as portraits of Munkácsy by József Rippl-Rónai, János Temple and Artúr Halmi, as well as a statue of Munkácsy by János Pásztor.

The collection was included in the 2005 exhibition of the Hungarian National Gallery entitled Munkácsy in the World, and then, together with the subsequent increases, in Vienna, Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow, St. Petersburg – to mention only the most important foreign locations – as well as in more than forty cities in Hungary and neighbouring countries inhabited by Hungarians. One of the main virtues of the collection is that it provides an overview of Munkácsy’s entire career as a painter, so visitors to the exhibition in Hajdúszoboszló can also get a comprehensive picture of the oeuvre of one of the greatest Hungarian painters.

Hajdúszoboszló - Munkácsy Exhibition - Yawning Apprentice

The life of Mihály Munkácsy, in brief

(20 February 1844 – 1 May 1900)

  • Birth – Mihály Munkácsy was born on 20 February 1844 in Mukachevo.
  • 1892 – He lost his parents at an early age, and from the age of eight he was raised by his uncle, István Röck in Békéscsaba.
  • 1895 – When he was barely 11 years old, his uncle gave him to a local master carpenter’s apprentice.
  • After he was liberated, he became a carpenter’s apprentice in Arad; By this time, he was already supplementing his income by drawing small portraits.
  • After two years, a serious illness took him home to Gyula. During his convalescence, he drew constantly, so his uncle sent him to study with the painter Karl Fischer, who worked in the city.
  • It was there that he was noticed by the academic painter Elek Szamossy, who can be considered his first master. Munkácsy spent two and a half years with Szamossy.
  • In 1863 he settled in Pest and immediately appeared at the exhibitions of the National Hungarian Fine Arts Society.

First successes

  • In the first half of 1865, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he wrote Easter Sprinkling (1865), one of the main works of Munkácsy’s first period.
  • He spent the next year and a half painting portraits and folk scenes in Pest, Békéscsaba and Gerendás.
  • In the autumn of 1866, he enrolled at the Royal Bavarian Academy in Munich.
  • The most important event of his second year in Munich was his visit to the 1867 Paris World’s Fair, where he became acquainted with the works of the outstanding artists of his time
  • The effect of what he saw was first evident in the Yawning Apprentice made in 1869.
  • However, the real breakthrough was the Death row, painted in the second half of 1869, which surpassed his earlier paintings both with its interpretation of the theme and its strongly realistic painting style.
  • The painting was awarded a gold medal in Paris, and the only 26-year-old artist was offered a contract by Adolphe Goupil, one of the most important art dealers of the 1860s

Settling in Paris

  • At the beginning of 1872, after the success of the Death row, Munkácsy moved to Paris. In the first years, he painted folk scenes with Hungarian themes.
  • In 1873 he travelled to Barbizon for a short visit to László Paál, but the atmosphere of the place and the intense creative atmosphere that characterized the community of Barbizon painters made him stay longer. There he adapted the plein-air color treatment characteristic of intimate landscapes to his own ideas. Gypsies at the Edge of the Forest is one of the excellent landscapes painted at this time, reflecting Munkácsy’s conception of nature.
  • From the 1870s, realistic life pictures (In the Pawnshop, The Village Hero, Night Vagabonds) and expressive portraits revealing the influence of the paintings of Rembrandt and Frans Halls originate.
  • As the critics of the time objected to the dark tone of his works, in 1876 he depicted himself and his wife in subtle shades of gray in front of the easel (In the Studio). Unfortunately, in the meantime, the picture turned black, so not only the furniture and ornaments in the background disappeared, but the child sitting behind the easel also became almost invisible.
  • The next major composition, The Blind Milton Dictates “Paradise Lost” to His Daughters, won the highest prize at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair, and Franz Joseph awarded the painter a title of nobility.
  • In the summer of 1874, Munkácsy married the widowed Baroness De Marches (born Cécile Papiér). In the following years, the couple built two exquisite houses in the artists’ quarter of Paris. The palace at 53 Avenue de Villiers, with a huge reception area, two studios, several smaller salons and bedrooms, was suitable for accommodating large groups. The Munkácsys and Munkácsy hosted painters, sculptors, writers, scientists, critics, art dealers, composers, including many Hungarians, from bourgeois and academic circles here every Friday.

Christ compositions

  • The decade between 1878 and 1887 was the most productive in Munkácsy’s career. This was the time when the two monumental compositions of Christ were born: Christ Before Pilate (1880–1881) and Golgotha (1884).
  • In February 1882, after Paris and Vienna, Christ Before Pilate was also exhibited in Budapest in the theatrical environment already established at the previous locations. The huge screen was presented on the floor in a dark room, in a special light that illuminated only the image field, which could give the public the impression of color films invented in the twentieth century. The whole country celebrated Munkácsy for weeks, and a delegation accompanied him to his hometown, where a memorial plaque was unveiled for him.
  • In 1881 he began the much more dramatic Golgotha. He depicted the crucifixion according to traditional iconography, and he depicted the indifferent, rough crowd with the tools of verism.
  • During the preparation of Golgotha, Munkácsy’s most personal image of Christ, Christ in the Rock Tomb, was created. The work is an interpretation of Hans Holbein’s painting preserved in Basel.
  • He painted his last great biblical composition, Ecce homo, between 1894 and 1896. In the picture, a vulnerable son of God, who can be humiliated in his humanity, stands alone in front of the crowd. The scene is not only tragic, but also cruel. The elaboration of the huge canvas is rougher than that of the two earlier images of Christ, in a sense more modern.
  • Ecce homo was premiered in Budapest in 1896, during the millennium celebrations, and this was Munkácsy’s last visit to Hungary.
  • The Christ Trilogy can be seen today in the Déri Museum in Debrecen.

Genre paintings ,Landscapes, Portraits

  • In the second half of the 1880s, Munkácsy painted a series of costumed scenes set in the era of King Louis XIII. We see the same characters here in changing situations, which, like the unusual presentation of the biblical images, can be seen as a precursor to a cinematic vision consisting of sequences.
  • In addition to genre paintings, landscapes and a few portraits are significant works of the eighties.
  • In the autumn of 1886, at Sedelmeyer’s encouragement, he sailed to America, and although there was no shortage of celebrations, as he was also received by the President of the United States of America and received several portrait commissions, the trip did not live up to the hopes placed on him.
  • After three months, he returned to Paris, where he received two extraordinary commissions: The Apotheosis of the Renaissance, he first had the opportunity to create the decoration of the staircase ceiling of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The 10 x 10 meter allegory can still be seen in its original place in the Austrian capital.
  • At the end of the 1880s, he was asked to present the Conquest of Hungary in a monumental vision for the new building of the Parliament. Munkácsy’s largest picture in size was completed in 1894, its original title was Árpád. Today it adorns the Bureau of the Parliament.

Final years

  • In the summer of 1896, Munkácsy’s health condition deteriorated. It was first treated in Baden-Baden, then in Colpacho and Paris. He wanted to paint, but because he was afraid of the excitement of creation, he was forbidden to do so.
  • He spent his last three years in the sanatorium of Endenich near Bonn. He died 125 years ago, on 1 May 1900, and was buried on 9 May in Budapest. His coffin was accompanied by a huge crowd of admirers to the honorary grave in the Fiumei Road cemetery.

His art is one of the outstanding values of Hungarian and universal art. Most of his paintings were preserved in foreign private collections for a long time, and the Hungarian public was mainly familiar with his unparalleled life and the realist works of the 1870s. In recent decades, thanks to the collection of Imre Pákh , many of Munkácsy’s previously unseen works have become directly available in Hungary.

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